WiiHD is your one-stop shop for hardcore gaming on the Wii.

Hardcore gamers frequently belittle the Wii for its low-power CPU, small storage space and gimicky casual games. Nintendo didn't keep their promise to focus on both hardcore AND casual games, but they did design a control system that is truly next-gen. Rumors of similar controls for PS3 and the 360 tell that tale. Sure, you can accurately control a 3D game with dual analog. You can also communicate in binary, but why would you want to? The Wii Remote rivals the PC keyboard and mouse as a control mechanism for 3D worlds, and it leaves dual-analog as a relic of the past. It can change the way games are played. Hardcore gaming isn't just about distracting ADD patients with shiny gfx, it's about delivering a whole new way of playing.

The Wii's FPS controls have finally been perfected with the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. In November of 2007, Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 brought the first taste of online FPS to the system, and the most customizable controls we've seen so far. Nintendo's focus may be elsewhere, but if you buy, the games will come. The most exciting game on the menu now is The Conduit, a new original IP from High Voltage that promises the whole package for the first time. The Wii has overtaken the xbox 360's 1 year lead and has the largest install base of any console. Talk of most of them being casual gamers is a misnomer—the new casual gamers mostly live in the same household as a hardcore gamers. If developers will finally stop phoning in Wii development and give us complete games, they'll see incredible returns.

This site will follow, document, review, compare and contrast the Wii's hardcore games with your help. There's good news on the horizon. Be a part of it at WiiHD. And leave your casual games at the door.

WiiHD Community Efforts

WiiHD is a huge fan of online gaming, but not just any online gaming. Core gaming in genres like racing, fighting, and shooters. So now we want to do our part to help the core Clan community on Wii make themselves known and increase their membership. We will begin listing notable clans that actively engage in clan wars in games like Medal of Honor: Heroes 2. We will however keep the gates, so not just any clan listing will be accepted. A clan needs to demonstrate viability to be listed

WiiHD is now unveiling a gallery of user created videos from Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 (MoHH2), currently the best FPS on Wii, and the only one with online multiplayer. We'll be doing this for a number of similar games as they come out. If you want your video included, just hit the link above and use the submission form.

If you have an iToy, you've been playing Civ Rev 2 for months now, but if you're on Android, it's finally come your way. Offcontract.net spotted Civ Rev 2 earlier today. So start downloading, it's a big game. Go ahead and call in sick for work tomorrow, because you know you're gonna need just one more turn.

OffContract spotted a little twitter hint from the folks behind Eufloria stating that art was inbound for "Euflorian". The developer eventually explained that it was part of Omni's Eufloria Adventures 'experiment'. Eufloria Adventures launched in April on PlayStation Mobile. Is this Adventures offshoot about to get bigger? Launch to new platforms? Develop superpowers? Stay tuned. Maybe the art will be informative.

Civilization Revolution was the best strategy game on the DS, and the DS had a few to choose from. Civ Rev 2 doesn't look like it's headed to handhelds, sadly, but it should be inbound to Apple and Android mobile devices. iOS users can play today for $15 while Android users can get in on the fun later this year. Need a device to play it on? Check out offcontract.net for the best unlocked Android and iOS smartphones.

If you're sick of Wireless Carriers ripping you off on smartphone contracts, break free and head over to offcontract.net to discover the best unlocked smartphones to take on prepaid or MVNO plans. This summer, the Moto G, Moto E, Galaxy S4 mini, Nokia Lumia 525 and the iPhone 4 are all in the running. Find out which is best for you.

Sometimes I hate being right. The Wii is no stranger to long delays in getting good games, or to fast and dirty ports. What makes this one sting so bad is that the potential for Modern Warfare was so high. Because of the quality of the original title, the Modern Warfare branding is almost as powerful as the Call of Duty branding itself. Modern Warfare will share a place in history alongside Quake, Goldeneye, and Halo.

The Wii version, on the other hand, deserves the rating IGN gave it — falling below the barely known PSP-port MOH:H2. This despite the fact that Modern Warfare had a proven sales record, a publisher bigger than some countries, a game engine already in place, an experienced developer team that did well with Call of Duty: World at War, and oh yeah, TWO YEARS to get it right; but it can't do the one basic thing every FPS on Wii has to do — control well. Between framerate issues screwing with precision, and lack of polish all over, this mediocre game is a slap in the face to Wii owners and to a great underlying game.

Frak you Activision. If you want my money, re-release the game in a year when you've actually finished it.

In IGN's hands-on with Modern Warfare Reflex, they mentioned they received no review copy. That's pretty weird if you ask me. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been amazed at how little information, how few images and how little footage there was of the game. At first blush, there seems to be a reason for withholding it from review: Treyarch got sloppy.

Moving slightly with the Wii-mote doesn't always register in on-screen movement, so trying to dial in that precise pixel-by-pixel aiming is a serious chore. With the framerate also pretty inconsistent at times the cursor takes the brunt of the impact and the only real hope for precise shooting comes with the game's single player lock-on function.

In regards to the online mode:

The overall framerate and connection quality is pretty remarkable considering it's pushing more options and modes than any other online Wii FPS, but it, too, is hurt by the unreliable controls. Shooting someone that's zig-zagging back and forth while running towards you is actually pretty tough (since you also have a somewhat unresponsive cursor control), and players know it.

Was there a big rush to get Modern Warfare Reflex out the door TWO YEARS after PS360 version so much that they couldn't attend to the SINGLE most important element of a Wii FPS: control? Of course not, but there appears to have been a rush to capitalize on Christmas sales and the Modern Warfare moniker. It's a frakking shame too. Modern Warfare and Wii fans deserve better. We've certainly waited long enough to expect better.

2007 called, and they want their game announcement back. That's right, according to kotaku, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is taking up its rightful home on the Wii. This November 10th, while the PS3 and 360 get their Modern Warfare 2 on, we finally get the original.

Treyarch, who also ported World at War to the Wii using the much vaunted modified COD4 engine, is taking another whack at Wii. It makes sense, since 1) Activision already had an engine on Wii 2) Call of Duty 4 was one of the best received shooters ever and 3) World at War (Wii) topped 1 million sales. Apparently Treyarch and Activision are both fond of money. As far as I'm concerned, Treyarch did well with World at War — far better than Wii porters ordinarily do — so I welcome their involvement and hope they bring their A game.

Should I be complaining because we're not getting MW2 at the moment? Who knows. Just because the first one rocked the casbah doesn't mean the sequel will (remember Halo 2?). For now, I consider this the best news for Wii this year. It sucks that it took this long, but at least it's finally here.

There are some things that previews and even pre-launch reviews are worthless for. Multiplayer is one of them. This is because you can't know what the network performance will be like until tens of thousands of gamers raid the servers and bring things to a crawl. I'll be putting down some initial pros and cons in this post over the next couple of days.

Pros:

Finally, Scifi. Enough with WWII shooters already. We get it, they had guns then. Explore something, ANYTHING else. The environments and weapons of SciFi make for an excellent alternative.

You can find a Friend online and join whatever game they are in. Neither WaWii nor MoHH2 had this functionality.

Great control customizations

Full custom button remapping is a first for Wii (WaWii had different presets, but no custom). If there were any justice, there would never be another Wii shooter without it. You can even take vital functions away from motions and put them on a button. I did.

You can change the sensitivity of motions, which is VITAL. In MoHH2 I'd always accidentally trigger a reload when I was fighting someone on a staircase and aiming up, then down. I'd just as soon have no motions, but this is nice too.

We'll stop complaining the day they finally fraking die. No sooner. If you don't understand why they suck, I envy your bliss.

We don't blame High Voltage for this, as so far, they've been the most sympathetic to gamers of any company on the topic, but it still screws up the game so it's still a con.

Lag — could just be launch day excitement. Hopefully it improves over time.

Framerate drops

it is unclear if network performance is the cause of this. Will it get better after the launch is over? Who knows.

There's an intermediate connection screen between when you select a game type and before you go into a game lobby that can hang and there's no way to back out (B gets you out of most menu stuff) if it has trouble authenticating some of the players, short of actually turning off your Wii. It's a rare problem, but still a con.

Analog lag.

I don't know if this is a function of the networking or control design, but the control response to the analog stick is terrible. It feels like you're trying to drive a tank instead of moving a nimble secret agent whose job it is to save the world. Strafing speed is okay, but the time it takes you to get to full strafe speed from rest or to switch from strafe right to strage left is appallingly slow. The same for changing from forward motion to backward motion.

Neutral:

You can't take a party of friends into a public game. This is nice because it sucks ending up with 2 n00bs against a skilled, skype-using party of 4 friends. It sucks because with the ever-disgusting friend code system, putting together a full-fledged private match is tough to do, with the party system, you only needed half a private match to get a full game going.